Cash flows and compliance in crisis 

 

In March-August 2015, our team conducted a rapid technical assessment involving informal money transfers to Syria. It was intended to assist humanitarian agencies operating inside the country who aim to reconcile two important goals: (1) to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of those who are affected by the conflict inside Syria and not benefiting from aid distributed in government-held areas; and (2) to minimise the risk that cash channelled in support of these efforts is neither derived from nor diverted to criminal or terrorist groups. 

 

Given the changing nature of international sanctions and fluid financial regulatory context of the countries immediately surrounding Syria – Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq – our focus was on developing simple but dynamic tools for humanitarian agencies to use in their internal risk management and action planning that, combined with highly specialist context analysis, should help facilitate the early stages of cash programming in the country.